


Blood Of Innocence

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Character of Color, Character of Color, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Female Character of Color, Gen, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-11
Updated: 2007-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara reaches some hard conclusions about her new bending abilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Of Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for Book 3, Chapter 7, "The Runaway", and Chapter 8, "The Puppetmaster."

Aang startled awake from a restless sleep, sensing something in their campsite was amiss. Worried and wondering just what seemed off, he rubbed his bleary eyes. After letting his vision adjust to the night, he took stock of the moonlit clearing. Momo was curled up nearby, fast asleep under Appa's giant paw. Two mounds by the embers, one of them snoring, matched Toph's and Sokka's bedrolls.

One bedroll by the fire, however, was empty, looking like it had not even been slept in.

"Katara?" Aang whispered, peering around the camp. "Katara? Where are you?"

There was no reply save for Appa's soft snuffling and Sokka's louder sawing by the fire. Aang rose and tiptoed around Sokka and Toph's sleeping forms, away from the camp, to look for his missing friend.

The full moon was still high in the sky, casting a soft, silvery glow over the night. Dew glistened in reflection, against the darkness of the surrounding trees of the clearing. Aang saw a silhouette kneeling by the edge of the glade facing the forest, the shadow of long hair rippling in the breeze. He padded through the cool, damp grass towards it. When he reached the figure, he knelt and reached out, touching her shoulder.

"Katara? Are you all right?"

She tensed at the light touch and turned away from him. "Please, Aang. Leave me alone. It's late, you should go back to the others."

"I can't sleep." It was true; he had taken what seemed like forever to fall asleep after the night's events. When he finally had, his dreams were full of images of wrung-out trees and wilted, blackened flowers. Of swords, and human puppets, and an old woman cackling in her chains.

Katara sighed and stared at her hands. "I don't know what to do," she whispered, clenching her hands in her lap. "I hate what I've done. I hate what I've become."

Aang called up a puff of air to dry out the grass, then sat down cross-legged beside her. "You did what you had to do," he said. "Sometimes you have to do what you don't want to."

Katara's lips quirked in a caricature of a smile. "I wish I never learned how."

"I know. I wish you didn't, either."

They fell silent for a moment, each staring into the moon-dappled forest. Aang pressed his hands together in meditation.

"I wish I wasn't a waterbender," Katara said a few minutes later, her voice dripping with sadness. "Then I wouldn't have to know any of this."

Aang released his hands, placing them palms down on his thighs. "You can't help being what you are, Katara. All you can do is control your power. And I know you can do that."

Katara reached out and plucked a small, red fire-daisy from the grass. She twirled the stem, rubbing her fingers against the silk of the petals. "I--I guess I never thought that waterbending could be used for bad as well as good. That someone from my own tribe could be evil."

_That someday I could be evil too._

"But Hamma was crazy," Aang said. "She'd been imprisoned for decades before she learned how, and by then it was too late."

"You don't understand!" Katara's eyes flashed hot in the darkness. "When I was in the prison after Toph's scam, I learned that I could use my own sweat for waterbending. I broke myself out. I didn't think it meant anything, just that it was a new source of water that I could use if I needed. That was just after a few hours. Not decades."

Aang frowned, trying to follow Katara's logic. "But Toph can break out of prisons too," Aang said. "She can bend metal."

"No, Aang." Katara's shoulders slumped. "Metal is a part of the earth, but it isn't alive. When Hamma was teaching me, she said, 'Where there's life, there's water.' Look around you, at the trees, the grass, the fire lilies. The crickets and the owls. And us. There's water everywhere to use, as long as there's life."

Aang nodded. "And we can bend water, so we can bend life."

"It's not just the bloodbending that I hate," Katara said, swiping her face with her fist. "I hate everything that Hamma taught me. Because it means, that to bend life, it has to die. If I pull the water out of flowers, they die. If I pull the water out of trees, they die. If I pull the water out of a person--" Her voice failed, and she stared up at the moon swimming in the sea of blurred stars.

Aang blinked, trying to think of what to say. The night silence stretched out, save for the chirping of the nearby crickets and the hint of snoring from the clearing.

"Even Hamma couldn't do that," he said finally. "She could only move the water inside the person. And even then she could only bloodbend at the full moon. Not at any other time."

Katara blinked rapidly, curling tighter into a ball. Oh, Aang, she thought, her heart sinking. You still don't know.

"You're a good person, Katara," Aang continued. "You're kind, and gentle. You could never hurt a person by bending the water out of him. Even if he was an enemy, you'd never do that, because you care too much."

Katara raised her head to meet his eyes, large and deep and solemn in the moonlight, her own eyes burning. "It'll be OK," Aang added. "I promise."

Her face crumpled, and she reached out blindly to pull Aang in close. Burying her face into his shoulder, she sobbed silently.

"It's OK, Katara," he repeated, rubbing her back in small, awkward circles.

No, Aang, she thought, clinging to him like a lifeboat. It's not OK. It'll never be OK.

She couldn't bear to tell him what had really happened: while Aang and Sokka were under Hamma's control, hurtling toward each other with Sokka's sword outstretched. In that moment, she had wanted to kill Hamma. And in that moment, she had not only bent Hamma's blood to her will--

In her rage and her fear, she had also started to pull the water out of Hamma's ancient body.

Katara had seen, and felt, the water begin to mist around Hamma, the molecules seething and coalescing; had been only a breath from sweeping it away from Hamma altogether, sending it flying into the heated air and rendering Hamma into dust. In that moment, she had felt the heady balance of life and death in her hands--

And terrified, she had released Hamma from the bind, just as Toph and the villagers arrived to arrest the old woman.

In the commotion of Toph's arrival with the newly-freed prisoners from beneath the mountain, no one had noticed what she'd done. Hamma knew, though. Hamma knew, and she had laughed as the villagers dragged her away. "My work is done," Hamma had said, her mad gaze piercing straight into her soul; and the triumph in her voice had cut Katara to the bone.

It can never be OK again.

Katara finally stilled, all cried out. Exhausted, she listened to Aang's steady heartbeat against her. He seemed so small, so young, still so untouched by the evil they'd seen in their travels--while Hamma had torn her own innocence away, as easily as she had shriveled and blackened the fire lilies.

She reached up to finger her mother's necklace, cached beneath the Fire Nation choker around her neck. She did understand why Hamma had done what she did, as kinswomen, as Water Tribe allegiance decreed. But she was now afraid that Hamma's quest for vengeance against the Fire Nation would ultimately consume her, too.

Katara didn't know if she had the strength not to succumb to it.

She resolved not to teach Aang what she had learned. He was the Avatar, meant to save the world; and there was still so much he needed to learn. But not this. He did not need to learn this. She would not teach him how to bloodbend. Perhaps, by not passing on that brutal knowledge, it might redeem her.

"Come on, Katara," Aang said, rising to his feet and pulling her up with him. "We should try to get some sleep before the sun comes up."

"Thank you, Aang," she said hoarsely. "Thank you for listening."

"No problem," he said, ending with a wide-mouthed yawn. They picked their way through the dew-laden grass back to the clearing, to Toph and Sokka still snoring peacefully in their bedrolls, to Momo and Appa still nestled together.

"Good night, Aang."

"Night, Katara."

Aang curled up against Appa and closed his eyes, while Katara lay back down in her now-cold bedroll. The moon was beginning to set, the chin on its awestruck face dipping below the horizon of the trees. She stared up at it again, shivering. The moon would begin to wane tomorrow, and there was still so much to do before the upcoming solar eclipse, one month from now. She would have to deal with the consequences of her new abilities later, after they defeated the Fire Lord. In the meantime, she needed to care for her friends, her family. That was what mattered, for now: getting them all through alive and safe. She sighed, and closed her eyes, and prayed for sleep.


End file.
